I was a high school senior when I first realized that there are different types of learners. Throughout my school career, I had been a “good student” which meant that I did my work, turned it in on time, attended classes, sometimes asked questions, and generally didn’t cause too many distractions. Often, I was the only girl in the upper-level science or math classes, and I studied hard (crammed) to make sure that my scores were similar to or better than the boy’s scores. Therefore, I was fairly confident that I would score well when it was time to take the ACT test. What I learned was that as a “good student”, my ACT scores were only average. However, some of my classmates who regularly earned C’s in our math and science classes had really high ACT scores. This made me reflect on the type of learner I was and wonder why those boys had scored higher than I had. What I decided was that I played the “school game” really well but I wasn’t actually learning the content with any depth.
Therefore, as I headed off to college, I was determined to be a “good learner” rather than a “good student”. However, I didn’t have any support in this pursuit, and I am sure that if I did learn about study skills, it was more focused on having a quiet space with all my supplies accessible during study times. So, the study strategies that I engaged in were mainly things that I came up with on my own. I did make it a point to seek out study groups that were helpful in addition to being fun. As the group processed the reading or worked problems, I was always amazed at how differently others perceived the important concepts or processes to solve problems and have always appreciated and learned from hearing different perspectives.
I distinctly remember learning about Maslow’s hierarchy and Bloom’s taxonomy in my undergraduate teacher training. However, I can’t remember when or how learning styles were introduced to me as an educator. It seems that learning styles have always been around. My approach to integrating learning styles was that in a classroom of individuals, there were going to be students who preferred each of the different learning styles. So, I would try to make sure that my lessons encompassed a wide variety of learning styles in order to meet the varied needs of my students. For example, I remember one student who was always doodling, and I deemed him a “kinesthetic learner”. His mom was adamant that I not let him doodle in class. Because I believed that he needed that movement/stimulation while learning, I made him a deal…if he could ask questions and answer any of my questions, he could doodle during class. If he was not contributing to the class discussion or unable to answer my questions, I would ask him to put away his pens and art book. Fortunately, this student could effectively doodle while being engaged in classwork, so I suppose this experience and others provided me with a valid example of the multiple intelligences for my students.
However, the learning styles never really seemed to fit me. Instead, I found that I used all of the learning styles at different times and in different learning activities. Therefore, my personal experience was more similar to what Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel (2014) explain as empirically based, “when instructional style matches the nature of the content, all learners learn better, regardless of their differing preferences for how the material is taught” (p. 146). As I reflect, I wonder why I didn’t question the “meshing hypothesis” (Pashler et al., 2009, p. 105) of learning styles more since it didn’t seem to align with my learning processes. However, it made perfect sense to me when Pashler et al. (2009) shared that the “learning-styles idea is actively promoted by vendors” (p. 106). Our society has succumbed to an elaborate marketing scheme that is promoting learning styles in order to sell books and assessments.
As I look forward, I am anxious to put the idea that students can only learn if they are taught in their preferred learning style to rest. Likewise, Sternberg’s concept of dynamic testing (Brown et al., 2014, p. 151-152) seems to negate the detrimental influence of the current trend for standardized testing as it helps the learner to identify what they need to learn in order to improve and to continue learning. I believe that the biggest challenge in the transition away from learning styles to empirically based strategies will be overcoming the idea that if learning is difficult, the teacher isn’t teaching it right or in the correct learning style. Somehow, we have to share the research with our students and their families that desirable difficulties while learning lead to durable learning and enhance the likelihood that information will be transferred.
Brown, P., Roediger, H., & McDaniel, M. (2014). Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning.
Harvard University Press.
Pashler, H., et al. (2009). Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence. Psychological Science in the
Public Interest, 9(3), 105–119. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-6053.2009.01038.x
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